


Picture Perfect

by shopfront



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Fix-It, Future Fic, Gen, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:55:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shopfront/pseuds/shopfront
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Claudia is very sure about the first thing she should do after she becomes the new Caretaker. (A possible future, set indeterminately sometime post-S2.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Picture Perfect

**Author's Note:**

  * For [minkhollow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/minkhollow/gifts).



> Warnings note: does not contain character death, but allows for the possibility of character death and makes non-specific/implied reference to canon character death.

"Wait, wait! I’m here, I’m here, I’ve got the-” Pete crashed into the front door of the Warehouse office, sending it flying open, and came to a thudding halt.

The room was filled with an undulating, golden light that reached out to fill every corner, creating a wall of blinding brightness where the door had been. Pete leant on it for a moment, bemused and flattened cheek first against the light, his arms splayed out and a long bronze cylinder held aloft in one hand.

"- Artifact,” he finished weakly, before sliding to the floor with a groan.

Pete could vaguely hear people yelling, and someone… a girl - "Claudia?” he croaked, - was screaming, but then it all faded away.

 

* * *

 

"Pete.” A voice seemed to reach through the darkness, and he batted it away. "Pete!”

Something impacted with his face, hard.

"Ow,” he complained, squinting upward and holding his cheek. "What was that for?”

"That was for fainting like a little girl when I was the one screaming,” the voice answered as Pete’s vision slowly started to clear.

Claudia’s face wavered into view, and he flinched reflexively when he noticed her hand hovering, waiting to slap him again if necessarily. There was a long, thick green ribbon dangling from her wrist, the ends trailing across his shoulder. He flicked them away clumsily, and then yelped when his hand was caught in a shower of gold sparks.

"You’re sort of… glowing, a little,” he mumbled around his fingers once they’d stopped smarting.

Claudia rolled her eyes and moved away from him. "He’s not damaged, everyone relax.”

"What happened?” Pete pushed himself up on his elbows, pulled a face at Artie as he swung into view, and then swallowed a retch when the room spun.

"You might say that you ran recklessly into an energy based security perimeter,” Claudia answered him primly, her lips pursed.

Pete paused mid-complaint and blinked at her, then at Artie. Claudia arched an eyebrow at him in return, and then her eyes widened.

She rounded on Artie. "Is that going to keep happening?”

Artie took a deep breath and pushed off from the desk he was perched against.

"A few side-effects are to be expected-” he started saying, hands held up in front of him as he advanced on Claudia.

"Side effects? Side effects!” Claudia shrieked. "This is unbelievable!”

"Er,” Pete contributed from the floor. "Guys? What’s going on?”

"- But they shouldn’t last more than a few -”

"You have got to be joking.”

"Artie?” Pete whined.

"What?” Artie snapped, turning and glaring down.

"Um, never mind. Have you seen that pipe thing? You know, the important one I had to find.”

Artie sighed and took off his glasses, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. "Do you perhaps mean the artifact to power the Warehouse organic life generator back up?”

"Yeah, right, the big metal pipe thing. And, uh, where did Claudia go?”

"Claudia put it back where it belonged while you were passed out,” Artie said and walked away, shaking his head.

"Right,” Pete said to himself. "Wait, you didn’t answer my other question!”

Artie walked through to the Warehouse proper without looking back and slammed the door behind him.

"Sure, fine, don’t tell me what’s going on,” Pete grumbled, flopping back down on the office floor. "It’s not like I just brought back the pipe thing to stop the Warehouse dying or anything.”

He huffed and shut his eyes, throwing an arm over his face.

"Or like I might not have a splitting headache from that… thing that happened.”

 

* * *

 

The next time he opened his eyes, it was to Leena shaking him awake by the shoulder.

"Are you alright?” Leena asked, brow furrowed. "Why are you on the floor?”

Pete opened his mouth, then paused.

"You know what?” he said after a beat. "It doesn’t even matter. Is that coffee?”

"Mhmm.” Leena helped him to his feet and held it out. "I thought everyone could probably do with a cup,” she said, before turning away to start gathering some of the papers that seemed to be thrown all around the room for no particular reason.

Pete watched her for a moment, eyes narrowed. "You know what happened in here,” he said, accusatory and making her jump. But before Leena could answer, Claudia breezed into the room, with Artie and Dr Calder trailing behind her.

"Pete!” she cried. "Pete, I need your help, you have to come with me.”

Not giving Pete a chance to answer, she grabbed him by the arm - and why was Artie waving his arms around so energetically, Pete wondered to himself - and then the office melted away from around them to be replaced with one of the aisles from the furthest end of the Warehouse.

"Woah,” Pete said, stunned, and pulled away from her. "Woah, how did you just… and we were… and now we’re….”

He stopped, and clamped his lips together.

"Feel sick?” Claudia asked. Pete nodded frantically and she wrinkled her nose. "I know, it’s kind of gross, but I think I'm starting to get used to it. But more importantly: Oh. My. God-”

Pete staggered sideways in alarm, one hand clamped over his mouth, flailing an arm for the nearest shelf to grab a hold of.

"- You would not believe what Artie has been keeping from us. There is _way more_ cool stuff in this place-”

"Have you been sneaking into Artie’s files?” Pete groaned, managing to break in with difficulty.

"- Than I could have even begun to dream of! No, no files. You really are running behind today, aren’t you?” Claudia observed thoughtfully, looking him over. "Never mind, there’s plenty of time for all of that later. Did you know that there’s a record by The Who in here that, when you play it, is meant to take you back to their _first ever public performance_?”

Claudia squealed and grabbed him by the forearms, pulling him away from the support of the Warehouse shelving, and jumping up and down.

"Not that we can use it of course,” she went on with a sigh, and the unpleasant rolling sensation in his chest that Pete hadn’t even had a chance to process yet, eased. "It’s not really time travel, it’s more like watching a projection, but people still seem to get stuck in-between then and now somehow.”

Dropping his arms, Claudia looped their elbows and started walking, paying Pete no mind when he stumbled to keep up.

"Don’t take this the wrong way,” Pete said when they reached the end of the row and turned left. "But you seem a little strange. Everyone does, actually.”

"Change is something to be embraced,” Claudia sing-songed.

"That really isn’t an answer,” Pete huffed.

"I know,” Claudia said, and then wrapped his hand in her own and squeezed. "But it kind of is as well. Here we are!”

Dropping back on her heels and swinging Pete around, Claudia brought them face to face with a very tall, very wide painting of a forest scene with a clock-face in the centre of it, still ticking.

"It’s…,” Pete leaned over and read the label. "’Picture clock of unknown origins.’ Huh. Fascinating.”

"It isn’t unknown, its origin just isn’t important for once.” Claudia pulled something out of her pocket and held it out to Pete. "I got these out of storage.”

Pete looked at the objects in her hand - a tie pin and a diamond ring - then looked back up at Claudia, confused.

"They’re Jack and Rebecca’s!” Claudia said, pulling a face at him. "Was that knock to your head harder than we thought?”

She reached up and tried to press the back of her hand against his forehand, but Pete waved her away, gesturing at her in mild confusion in the same time.

"Why did you get Jack and Rebecca’s things out of storage?”

"To put in the clock, of course,” Claudia replied, exasperated.

"Of course, to put in the clock,” Pete said, nodding. Then he stopped, and started shaking his head. "No, I’m still confused.”

"Just- take these,” Claudia said, shoving the objects at him, and then walking over to pull the painting off its shelf.

"Woah, take it easy. Do you even know what that thing does?”

"Yes,” Claudia said, dragging it down with a thud and turning it just far enough around that she could slip her hand down between the painting and the shelves, started pressing her fingers along the inside of the back of frame. "It’s going to fix something we couldn’t.”

There was a faint click, and then the back of the painting swung outward to bang gently against the lower shelf, to Claudia’s ‘aha’ of triumph.

Pete walked over, and cocked his head to the side to look where the back of the painting used to be.

Then he blinked, and leaned back around to the front.

"The forest disappeared,” he observed.

Claudia made a soft sound of approval. "The last story has been erased,” she muttered to herself, crouching down to peer at the back. "It should be empty now.”

Pete frowned and walked back around to examine it again with her. It was darkly coloured and rather glossy, and somehow almost - he considered it for a moment - almost like looking around a corner into a pitch black, empty room.

"Claudia-,” he started warily.

"Look, it… it kind of makes like a bubble, a bubble of time. Sort of. It’s hard to explain, but if you put something in it that belongs to someone, and it creates a copy of them in the painting.” Claudia stood, shrugged, and started moving it around so they could reach it better. "It’s sort of like an alternate reality, where things can play out differently to how they did in our world.”

Pete nodded slowly, and reached out lazily toward the back of the painting. The blackness rippled, as if sensing his almost touch.

"Don’t put your hand in it!” Claudia interrupted him, alarmed. "It doesn’t just create copies! God, haven’t you learnt anything working here? Just throw them in,” she said, gesturing toward his hand as best she could with both of her own propping up the heavy metal frame.

Pete hesitated, distracted by voices starting to echo down the aisles, coming towards them.

"Look, Artie and Vanessa are just worried that something is going to go wrong. But it won’t. I know it won’t, because the Warehouse knows it won’t.”

A small inkling of something started to bloom in the back of Pete’s mind, and he stared at Claudia, examining every part of her face. Learning it, like it was new.

"Don’t wait, there’s no time,” she hissed. "Throw them in already!”

He could hear Artie getting close, voice pitched extra loud with outrage over the more mellow tones of Leena and Dr Calder, and he smiled.

Then he flicked his hand, and the black rippled again, and stretched, and swallowed the pin and the ring up.

And Rebecca and Jack got to live happily ever after, together, in a picture clock.


End file.
